"Health & Medical News"

By Bob Curley

The Recovery Community Services Program (RCSP) — a grant program that funds peer recovery support services for individuals with alcohol and other drug problems –? could be on the chopping block, and advocates for addiction recovery are mobilizing to convince the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to continue funding the program.

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Years after acknowledging a past battle with alcohol abuse, President Bush this week provided details about his personal recovery, ABC News reported Dec. 11.

“I doubt I’d be standing here if I hadn’t quit drinking whiskey, and beer and wine and all that,” Bush said in an interview.

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“We are not your father’s VA,” Jonathan B. Perlin, MD, PhD, who until recently headed the Dept. of Veterans Affairs health system, was fond of saying about today’s department.

For decades, the quality of care in the VA health system was considered woefully sub-par. Enrollees complained of shoddy facilities, uncaring medical professionals and neglectful treatment. Its reputation suffered from such accounts as Oliver Stone’s 1989 film “Born on the Fourth of July,” which depicted the paralyzed protagonist’s VA hospital setting as squalid and decaying.

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In an effort to crack down on establishments that may serve drinks to already intoxicated customers, New Jersey is instructing police officers to ask motorists they stop on suspicion of drunk driving where they consumed their last drink, USA Today reported on Nov. 27.

Police then send the information to the New Jersey Alcoholic Beverage Control Agency, who are sending investigators to the establishments most frequently cited by drivers as the location of their last drink.? 

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Delray Beach, Fla., located between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, has emerged as the country’s largest and most vibrant recovery community, with many halfway houses and 5,000 people a week attending 12-step meetings, the New York Times reported on Nov. 16.

The recovery community in Delray Beach exists well beyond the walls of the community’s rehabilitation centers, with recovery radio shows, a recovery motorcycle club, and a coffeehouse with its own therapy group. Because it is a compact area, recovering people cross paths daily along the shops and bistros of Atlantic Avenue, oblivious to the tourists and “normies,” their term for sober people not in recovery.

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Addiction recovery is “a voluntarily maintained lifestyle characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship,” according to a draft definition composed by an expert panel convened by the Betty Ford Institute.

Published in the October 2007 issue of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, the draft definition was included in a special section on Defining and Measuring Recovery. Experts noted that while the term “recovery” enjoys widespread use, no clear definition exists.

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Women seeking recovery from addiction often must also overcome a history of sexual abuse as well as the challenges of raising children, poverty, lack of education and other obstacles, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported Oct. 17.

Sexual abuse, domestic violence and depression can be both a cause and effect of alcohol and other drug use among women, experts say. One study estimated that 70 percent of female addicts have a history of sexual abuse, compared to 12 percent of men, including incest and sexual trauma as children or teenagers.

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Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.), a nine-term member of Congress and longtime supporter of addiction treatment and recovery issues, has announced that he will retire at the end of his current two-year term in office, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported Sept. 17.

Ramstad, himself a recovering alcoholic, said he was “burned out” but also expressed his desire to see addiction and mental-health parity legislation passed in Congress before he leaves office next year.

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